


Ache

by wafflelate



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Angst, Aoba and Anko rely on each other in enemy territory, Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-05 20:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20279509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/pseuds/wafflelate
Summary: Anko's first mission with Aoba isn't exactly smooth.





	Ache

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wafflelate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/gifts).

It's important to be careful when you work with new people, that's what Anko has learned. You have to watch out for yourself first and them second until you can see the shape of things. It's the only way to do things. Anko had tried to explain that to Kurenai, last they'd seen each other, but Kurenai hadn't understood. People you take missions with are your comrades, Kurenai had say. If you don't trust them, you'll make the mission harder. 

But Kurenai doesn't understand, because Kurenai's genin team is mostly still alive, mostly. Kurenai has a clan. Kurenai has a _boyfriend_, or will soon, no matter what she says about Sarutobi Asuma. Kurenai has never been under suspicion of treason, and Kurenai doesn't see how people look at Anko. 

The suspicion. The contempt. You must have known, right? the first team had asked, when she was freshly released from T&I and more or less being given rope to hang herself with. He taught you, you worshipped him, he practically raised you, there was no one else, so you turned a blind eye, didn't you...? 

Fuck you, she'd told them. Fuck you, you don't know shit. I'm going to kill that monster some day. I'm going to cut his dick off. I'm going to make him suffer. 

They hadn't stopped asking and they hadn't stopped looking. They'd doubted her every step of the way, poking and prodding, and when shit went down — well. That first team, they'd been hand selected by Inoichi, so they hadn't left her behind. She'd gotten back to the village just fine. But the next team hadn't been so carefully selected, and the next one even less so. 

This time, there hadn't even been a team. Just one guy, Yamashiro Aoba, a special jōnin from the cryptology department. He wears sunglasses, so she couldn't tell how he looked at her, but her neck still prickled. He _must_ have been looking. Everyone looks. Everyone knows. 

Anko is face down in a ditch that's made slick both from the remnants of the morning's rain showers and from the blood of the assholes Anko has just killed. Everything hurts — her shoulders and her back, her knees, her calves, her head. She doesn't know where the hell Yamashiro is. Scrabbling through the mud to climb back to her feet when her hands are chakra-numb from overusing jutsu, Anko hopes he's not dead. She doesn't want the scrutiny that comes from having your superior officer kick it on a mission, even though you'd think they'd know that sending people into an area that was recently a warzone would be, you know, _dangerous_. 

It's easy to follow the path of the fight back to where they were ambushed, but Aoba's nowhere to be seen. There's more signs of fighting, though, and no body. Not even enough blood for one. 

Fuck. 

Numb hands or not, Anko can't wait. She crams her hands into the seals for the summoning jutsu and pours chakra into it carefully until she summons the little snake she likes best for tracking, a snake small enough to wrap around her throat and whisper tracking directions in her ear as she flings herself across the countryside. Yamashiro is still alive, so Anko has to get him back no matter how loud her body screams at her to stop and rest before she falls apart. 

Yamashiro probably wouldn't come after her if their positions were reversed, but that doesn't matter. He's the one who knows what in the hell they're even supposed to be doing on this mission, she reasons with herself. 

It has nothing to do with Aoba pushing her out of the way of the first jutsu in that ambush and getting his arm messed up in the process. It has nothing to do with him saving her life. He probably didn't mean it. He's probably, Anko considers, folded over some asshole foreign ninja's shoulder right now cursing himself for sticking his neck out for her. 

She'll get him back and they'll do the mission. That's it. 


End file.
